Do I really need to explain?

A new pipe for the XT – nice, but I couldn’t recommend MEP.

Upon motarding the XT6, I discovered I needed a new exhaust, as the stock muffler rubbed against the rear tyre. Great excuse to get a new exhaust! I ended up getting a custom one made at Motorcycle Exhaust Professionals. I opted for a full stainless system, with oversize headers. This ended up costing $800.

Some better pics of their handy work:

While the workmanship seem nice, I must say that I doubt I would buy anything from them again, or recommend them to anyone. I told the guy at the shop that i wanted something not too loud – nothing that is offensive or will get the attention of the police. He was kind of dismissive at the time, but I thought it was just his manner. When I picked up the bike, I discovered that they’d put a straight through, large bore muffler on, with no baffle. His comment was "we thought this sounded nice".

Well fuck, I don’t care what you think, I care about what I asked for.

Riding it home, it was stupidly loud – to the point that it was uncomfortably loud for me. At the shop he was reluctant to fit a baffle, but after insisting he "kindly" gave one to me for only $10. I fitted the baffle when I got home – quietens it down, but it probably goes a bit too far. I’ve chopped a few cms off the end of the inner pipe already, and will experiment further with this to get a decent sound.

So, the bottom line is, yay! i got a new exhaust for the XT! Unless you want a deafening, cop-attracting, neighbor pissing off exhaust, then I would not recommend Motorcycle Exhaust Professionals, unless you want to spend a lot of extra time fucking around to get it sounding decent but not offensive. In hindsight, I probably would have tried Pipemasters – more expensive ($1100 vs $800) but their pipes look nicer and they sounded like they would actually build the system you liked, rather than the one "they thought sounded nice".